The art of giving: A painful loss becomes a passion for philanthropy

Condo king Bob Rennie and his family are making a significant donation to the VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation. His mother died last year after a long struggle with dementia.

Photograph by: Jenelle Schneider
, Vancouver Sun

Bob Rennie is a man used to controlling his storyline. The "condo king's" ability to charm reporters and his skill at self promotion are legendary in Vancouver media circles.

But on this day, he's looking nervous as he approaches a reporter's table at Yew restaurant in the Four Seasons Hotel, where many of the city's influential citizens dine frequently.

"Do you mind if we move over there," is the first thing he says. Staff are eager to oblige as we leave the lounge and head to "his" table in an area of the restaurant still closed to the public.

"Do you mind if I sit there, I'm a bit OCD," Rennie says nervously after I take the seat with a view of the room. We switch and he seems to relax a bit now that he can survey the landscape. But the man known as a "clip machine" is not his usual confident self today.

"This is very raw for me," he says haltingly.

We are here to talk about his mother. Margaret Elizabeth Rennie died at 83 on Sept. 27, 2012 after a long struggle with dementia. Rennie has never spoken publicly about the dark descent into fearfulness suffered by his stylish and exuberant mom in her last years.

He's agreed to do so now because the Rennie family has just announced an estate gift of $2 million to the VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation. It comes at a time when the foundation is in the final stages of a campaign to raise funds for a new $82-million mental health centre at West 10th and Willow. The province has committed $57 million to the project. Last week, the foundation announced it was still about $10 million short of its goal, and launched a public appeal for donations.

The new centre, slated to open within five years, will replace a dank, crumbling structure built in the 1940s at Vancouver General Hospital, which was never meant to house psychiatric patients. Today, patients with severe mental disorders are housed four to a room with one washroom for 20 people.

Margaret Rennie's early onset dementia was diagnosed and treated by VGH and the family donation recognizes the role it played in treating and supporting her last years.

"In our baby-boomer generation, it seems that everyone has been touched by mental illness in their friends or families. All too often, we fear that the illness will blemish us, taint us somehow," Rennie says.

"I didn't think I would ever be comfortable talking openly about my mom's illness," he says. "When I decided to donate to mental health, and not to one of the celebrity diseases, I knew I had to do more than give; I had to talk about the giving.

"It's the business of early detection that interests me the most. Mom suffered from dementia. VGH identified the illness five or six years ago but it was at a level of seriousness by that time.

"She probably could have been helped by psychiatric care earlier in her life if everyone around her had been more open to real conversation about what was happening. An earlier assessment would have allowed all of us, including Mom, to deal with her mental illness with preparedness and acceptance."

Rennie's carefully managed public persona has never before included this sad chapter.

But the rest of it is local lore. The East Van kid. The high school dropout who rode the 1990s pre-sale marketing boom with a vengeance, smashing North American records along the way with feats like the sale of 300 luxury downtown units on one Sunday in 1996.

Rennie has made an indelible imprint on Vancouver's skyline that includes marketing some of our tallest buildings: the Wall Centre (2001), Shaw Tower (2004) and Shangri-La (2009).

Former Vancouver mayor and now Liberal Senator Larry Campbell has said "everything this city has evolved over the last 20 years has Bob Rennie written all over it."

But these days, it's art and politics that mostly preoccupy Rennie. He's a high-profile member of Liberal Premier Christy Clark's campaign cabinet and a key fundraiser for her team.

Rennie is perhaps most famous now for his passionate pursuit of art. He jokes that he's "mad enough to build my own museum" — a permanent 20,000-square-foot gallery and exhibition space in the Wing Sang building in Chinatown. He is widely thought to have one of the finest collections of contemporary art on the continent and is the North American chair of the acquisitions committee for the Tate Modern Gallery in London, England.

Rennie's celebrated disagreement with Vancouver Art Gallery director Kathleen Bartels over the future of the gallery is also the stuff of local legend. But today, he says he was wrong to turn strongly held views about the future of the VAG into a public spat.

"It should never be personal. It should always be about principles. I've learned that the hard way," he says, choosing his words carefully. One senses that dropping the sword in the Bartels battle might be part of the same psychic journey that has now lead Rennie to open up about his painful family history.

Just six months ago, in a Vancouver Sun obituary, he wrote touchingly about how his mother's beloved job as a waitress allowed her to indulge a sociable spirit and paid for her passion for fashion and the constant re-decorating of their East Van bungalow.

Buried in the son's effusive tribute, there is only one clue to the fearfulness and social anxiety that characterized Margaret Rennie's last years.

"THANK YOU also to every single person at the Broadway Pentecostal Home on Granville Island for giving Mom a reason to leave her room."

Rennie is still, understandably, very careful in his description of his mother's symptoms and protective of the private details of her illness. And he won't discuss the family dynamics that might have delayed diagnosis of her condition. He does say that the decision to donate the $2 million was part of estate planning with his son Kris, who runs the family business, daughters Katie and Stephanie and longtime partner Carey Fouks.

"We have decided together this is a family legacy that we can offer in Mom's memory. But I have to do more than give. You know that Curb Your Enthusiasm episode about the 'anonymous' donor who stands in the corner silently taking the credit? Well that can't be me. I agreed with VGH that I was going to rip off the Band-Aid."

With the family's substantial pledge, Rennie joins a growing list of B.C. business leaders who have transformed mental health fundraising from "tough sell" into "Cinderella story" in recent years.

Real estate mogul and retailer Joe Segal and his wife Rosalie led the way in 2010 with a $12-million gift to the VGH Mental Health Centre that will eventually bear their name.

It is the largest personal donation ever made for a mental health project in B.C. history.

In announcing his donation, Segal said, "I didn't want to support the obvious. I wanted to help where it's most needed."

The man leading the charge for the new centre, foundation vice-president Jim O'Hara, says the Segal donation changed the whole conversation around fundraising for mental health in B.C.

"When you have people like Joe Segal and Bob Rennie on board, it gives others permission to think that maybe this is a cause I can get behind.

"It's the last remaining piece of our health care system that needs to be brought into the mainstream in terms of the physical space in which we treat our patients," O'Hara says.

"There's already huge stigma attached to the illness, and the place we've been housing them at VGH has not helped at all."

Rennie credits O'Hara for really "moving me along" in understanding the difference between charity and philanthropy. And O'Hara says of Rennie: "he was an early convert to the cause. This really means something to him. He wanted to put his money where it would matter most."

Rennie has agreed to serve on the VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation's Community Leaders Fundraising Group and use his influence to find the additional $10 million needed to complete the campaign. It seems that Rennie — condo king, art star, political operative — has used a painful personal loss to find a new passion for philanthropy.

"Really conscious giving is not writing a cheque to get out of the room, or to be invited to the right dinner parties or so that you'll like me. I'm 56 years old. I have a voice. The question is: How am I going to use it?"

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The mental health series lineup:

Today: Community leaders lead fundraising. Realtor Bob Rennie is the most recent donor to the VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation.

March 29: Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Carolyn Cross survived the Richmond plane crash in October 2011 and now helps citizen first-responders deal with the emotional aftermath of accidents and tragedy.

April 5: Depression. A Vancouver broadcaster and a young Victoria musician share their personal battles with depression and suicide.

April 12: Mood disorders. The symptoms, impact, science and advances in treatment, and tips on how families can manage it.

April 19: A patient's perspective. How a patient's environment plays a vital role in their therapeutic process.

April 26: On the street. Mental illness is the single biggest problem facing police on the streets of Metro Vancouver.

May 3: In the workplace. Mental illness is now the leading cause of workplace disability claims.

May 10: New drugs and therapies. Successes over the years and what is promising and in the pipeline.

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